Real-time controls

Vehicle guidance

Ensuring minimum latency and maximum fault tolerance in critical vehicle systems requires careful design. The IV Lab staff has developed expertise in vehicle control systems, including integrating data from multiple sources, processing data in real time, and interfacing with vehicle control systems and user-centered displays.

The IV Lab has developed driver-assistive systems that can guide a vehicle safely even if the driver is distracted or incapacitated, avoiding collisions and coming to a safe stop if control is lost. Beginning with the SAFETRUCK research vehicle, the IV Lab has incorporated successive generations of real time control systems into transit buses and snowplows.

In addition to driver-assistive functions, the control systems of current IV Lab research vehicles are capable of guiding the vehicles safely on designated routes, such as bus lanes, even if the vehicle operator is temporarily distracted. The guidance systems not only maintain position within a route, but are able to respond in real time to obstacles or incursions by other vehicles.

Traffic management

The IV Lab’s Rural Intersection Collision Avoidance research relies on real time processing of data from radar and lidar vehicle detectors to warn drivers of hazardous traffic conditions. The system tracks multiple vehicles moving at highway speed and computes their projected trajectories in real time, then uses this information to display safety warnings to drivers waiting to enter the highway from a rural road. Specially designed algorithms enable the system to identify potentially dangerous traffic configurations before they occur and issue warnings based on that determination.